SNEAK PEAK: To Kill a Necromancer
Good morning lovelies!
My novella To Kill a Necromancer comes out February 24th, but I thought I'd share a little sneak peak here. In this scene, our main character Jinua is off on her first mission, but she runs into a little monster trouble on the road. (The monster is, of course, inspired by the tiny yet terrifying trapdoor spider.)
Note that while I've gotten developmental edits for this, I'm still waiting for line edits and proofreading, so it's not gonna be perfect.
Enjoy!
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The next several days passed in a blur of roads, forests, and the odd town. There wasn’t much in the way of empires or kingdoms on this side of the Steppe. Not anymore. Instead, it was all cities and city-states, hundreds if not thousands of mini-kingdoms scattered throughout the entire continent. Which meant the state of the roads for travelers was hit-and-miss, depending entirely upon which territory they were going through. Some were wide enough for several wagons and easy on the horse’s hooves. Others were crumbling paths of stone that Jinua feared would break her poor mare’s legs. And others were simply non-existent, and she had to use the stars to ensure she was going the right way.
Despite having lived in the abbey for years, Jinua didn’t have much to pack. The barracks had squeezed her in with her fellow recruits as if the building was wringing them for their juices. And all Lykhuusi learned to travel light, even if they planned to stay in one area for a long while. Her armor, shield, and weapons were the bulkiest items she had, and she wore those. Everything else fit either into her saddlebags or—in the case of the blanket Hiryeme had given her—got rolled up and strapped to it. Atar had crafted the saddle and its bags beautifully, and it still smelled of fresh leather. There were more pockets than she knew what to do with, though she had no doubt that they’d fill up soon enough.
Most nights were spent under the open sky, near a stream or river. She’d set up camp, do her nightly prayers to Jadiim, meditate, and go to sleep. Sometimes she’d find a village and get to sleep in a bed; they took one look at her expensive bronze breastplate, the fiery sword emblem on her shield, and refused to charge her. Though someone usually asked her to use her paladin powers to heal some injury or illness, or even just to give them her blessing.
“Uh, sure,” she said awkwardly, the first time someone asked for that. They knelt at her feet, and she put her hand on their head, muttering a prayer to Jadiim for a happy, honorable life. Her face was so hot she thought it would catch fire. She was no god; her words would do nothing unless Jadiim was actually listening, not that the villagers cared.
A couple days later, as the sun began to sink, Jinua thought she saw buildings in the distance and spurred her horse forward, hoping she wouldn’t have to give anymore blessings.
She was half-right. There were buildings, but they were long abandoned. Holes in the stone rooftops and walls, ivy and grass growing wild on the cracked streets, and not a soul in sight. Jinua slid off her horse to better lead her through the tattered streets.
“What do you think happened here?” she asked Athos. The mare nickered at her. She petted her snout and continued to explore, wondering if one of these buildings were sound enough to act as her shelter for the night. The sun had given her a beating today, sweat soaking through her dress. She had to wear her armor, because otherwise it’d slide right off the saddle. And because she was horseback, she also had to wear buckskin trousers under her dress that tied up the sides of her legs. It protected her from getting welts in some very unfortunate places, and were yet another layer for her to wear in the summer heat.
Most of the stone buildings weren’t crumbling; rather they were all smoothed from centuries of wind and rain. It was amazing the elements had left even this much standing. She imagined she’d ridden over most of this town on her horse, and hadn’t even noticed it.
“This must be from the Glokassan Empire,” she mused. It had stretched from the Great Steppe to the sea, had even conquered several islands beyond the coast. She couldn’t recall much of its history, but she’d seen the old maps. It’d been big. It had completely collapsed during the God Wars, shattered into all the little city-states and kingdoms that rose and fell like waves in an ocean, gone just as fast. But they all still spoke Glokassan.
Closer to the center of the dead town, she found a building that looked similar to a temple, but smaller and starker. Her first thought was that it was one of Jadiim’s earliest temples, or perhaps his wife Mebew’s, or any of the other gods. But when she came inside, she saw half a human skull and several other dusty bones on the altar.
Jinua reeled back. This wasn’t a temple to the gods. It was a temple to one of the Primordials, their parents.
“This better not be how they worshiped the Sisters,” she muttered, looking around for more clues. Primordials were some of the earliest deities, worshiped by humans for thousands of years. When the Primordials birthed the gods, including Jadiim, there had been the inevitable, “Who will rule the universe now” conflict, resulting in the God Wars. Gods turned against Primordials, and humans turned against each other depending on who they followed. Entire empires were destroyed just like this village, and the buildings left to rot. Some were considered cursed sights even today. Eventually, the gods were the decisive winner, and Jadiim was named their king.
Which didn’t mean that no humans worshiped the Primordials anymore. Most of the Lykhussi continued to revere the Sisters: the Primordial Life and her sister, the Primordial Death. They just did it without the gods-damn human sacrifice.
No matter how much she scoured the ruins, she couldn’t figure out which Primordial this sacrifice was supposed to be for. Likely either Life, Death, or Hatred. Maybe Terror? Or it could’ve been for all of them. Jinua gathered up the remaining bones she could find, some of them crumbling in her hands, and took them outside. Some flint later, and the bones were burned with a proper send-off, centuries overdue.
The sun continued to lower. She had to find proper shelter soon. The temple was raised higher than most of the town, with crumbling stone steps that led to some sort of open area that might have been a marketplace. She’d left Athos there when exploring the temple and went to collect her.
As she went to where she thought she’d seen a fairly stable residential area, the horse she led by the reins suddenly whinnied and shied back.
“No?” Jinua asked, putting a hand on her sword. In the week she’d traveled with this mare, she’d rarely seen her spooked. Cirhina had specifically raised her to be a war horse, after all. “What do you see?”
Athos whined and stomped her hooves. Jinua was armed and armored, but her shield was strapped to the horse’s back.
As she reached for it, the ground down the street erupted. Jinua could see only a large shape rushing toward them through the dust and dirt. Athos pulled free and sprinted off.
Jinua rolled to the side, away from the blood-stained temple so she wouldn’t be cornered. The shape smashed the spot she’d been in a moment ago, stone cracking under its blow. She backed further into the abandoned marketplace, and as the dust settled, got a good look at her opponent.
Its body was roughly the size of a horse, though it had six legs rather than four, making it look like an oversized spider. Fine hairs covered its entire being, and it had no eyes over its elongated snout full of teeth.
A trapper, she realized, cursing the fact that she couldn’t get to her shield. Some lived on the Great Steppe, essentially massive spiders that, instead of spinning webs, dug holes in the ground and covered them like a trap door. More than one Lykhuusi horse and person had been lost to their jaws.
She had never fought one before. She’d only been in a handful of life-threatening situations, only one of them an actual fight, and always, always with a team. Never alone.
It wasn’t fear that gripped her, or panic. No thoughts rushed through her mind. It was more of a heightened sense of awareness. The evening air in her lungs, the crumbling cobblestones beneath her sandals, the way the trapper shifted its weight, almost swaying its massive body between its six legs.
It had no eyes. Instead, it hunted by sound, smell, and…
Its nostrils flared as it sniffed the air. Jinua tightened her grip on her sword, not quite ready to make the noise required to draw it. The beast stomped on the ground with one leg, sending vibrations that echoed in Jinua’s bones. It turned to her.
Tremors.
She drew her sword and charged.
The trapper swiped at her with a clawed leg. She blocked, trying to go for its belly, and it snapped at her, biting her sword arm. Its teeth ground against the bronze bracer, preventing it from tearing into her flesh but still trapping her.
A blow from one of those six legs to her torso knocked the breath out of her. The trapper pummeled her again with its front legs, beating her in her armor. Something in her chest cracked, pain flaring immediately after. Gritting her teeth in pain and growing rage, Jinua pulled her knife out of its sheath on her waist with her free hand.
The trapper stopped beating her and instead shook her, like a dog with a ragged toy. Jinua heard her trapped sword arm snap before she felt it, screaming as agony rippled through her with every jolt. Her sword clattered to the ground.
It finally stopped. Jinua panted, sucking in raspy breaths. By some miracle, she’d kept her grip on her knife, and drove it into the trapper’s neck.
It dropped her to the ground, shrieking, its legs pummeling the ground as it writhed. She pulled herself to her feet, arm screaming, every breath like drawing in razors.
Fire breathes, Livius had told her when she’d first gotten her powers. Without air, without breath, it dies.
Jinua forced a deep breath, and turned it into fire.
Her olive skin glowed with barely-contained flames that had an odd pinkish hue. The heat suffused around her arm and ribs, becoming so hot it was almost unbearable. Her bones shifted back into place and mended. She breathed out smoke, and while the heat remained, the pain vanished. Her bones and muscles burned, filling her with godlike strength and speed.
The trapper got itself under control and hissed at her, blood leaking out of its neck wound. Fury at this beast for daring to hurt her crashed with the sheer elation of still being alive and the thrill of the fight. She knew how to win, now.
Jinua grinned, scooped up her sword, and charged again.
The trapper tried to swipe at her with its legs. Knocking them aside was child’s play with the fresh fire in her veins, and she drove both blades into its torso.
The beast stiffened. Jinua pulled out her weapons, unleashing a waterfall of blood on herself. She darted out of the way just before it collapsed.
Jinua’s body cooled, the heat leaching out of her. Even as she sagged with exhaustion, she whooped, cheering her victory into the darkening sky.
The growl from her stomach was the universe’s only response. She wrinkled her nose. She hadn’t used that much power, had she?
Athos trotted up to her as she wiped the blood from her eyes. She looked at the trapper’s corpse, then the ruins. Predators were territorial, so the rest of the place was likely safe. But she didn’t want to sleep in a land of so many ghosts and bad memories.
“Let’s set up camp by the river we passed earlier, shall we?” she decided.
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You can preorder To Kill a Necromancer on Amazon. Once I get an actual cover, I'll share it!